The Ruins of Amidia

Remnants of Lost Magic

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The Grand Duchy of Neruvah stands as one of the last bastions of inter-racial cooperation on the continent of Espar. Built upon the ruins of a great city lost to the ages, Neruvah’s roots run deep, down into the time of the Amidians, a people whose traces are found across Espar, but of whom almost nothing is known. Neruvah was formerly Lisentia, the capital city of the Kingdom of Loran, the largest human nation on the continent. The city was a breeding ground for new ideas and new scholarship for hundreds of years.

When the Fenlander Wars spread westward across the continent nearly two centuries ago, the fragile bonds of commerce were not enough to protect the major kingdoms from dissolving into chaos and anarchy. New magics and new technology had come into the hands of the disheartened Fenlanders, a mercenary horde who had been slowly gathering strength and numbers as the civilized world grew more settled and prosperous. Armed with these new weapons and their communal anger at feeling shut out from the riches and opportunities of the western kingdoms, this horde stormed across Espar, leaving only destruction, confusion, and loss in their wake.

The effects of the Fenland Invasion are still being felt today. The old kingdoms, their lands and resources destroyed or depleted and their infrastructure collapsed, were unable to retain control of their holdings, and eventually shrank into city-states, each claiming and defending only their immediate surroundings and leaving vast tracks of Wildlands unclaimed and unobserved, except by the remanants of the Fenlanders who did not return to the east when their pillaging was done. The races of Espar, once in constant dialogue, shrank in on themselves, becoming insular alliances of city-states, bound together by a similar language and the bonds of blood.

Humans, once the most wide-ranging of the races, retreated back to the central plateaus of Loran, preferring the security of numbers to the promise of unclaimed land. The Dwarves migrated south to the volcanic caverns of their mythical King, Brondak. The Elves flew north to the timber forests of the Frostlands. Gnomes, Halflings, and Orcs, their homelands occupied longer by the invading Fenland horde, scrapped together what they could and settled in the eastern lands, in small enclaves and large underground warrens.

Today, Neruvah remains one of the only cities still open to inter-racial engagement. From its western perch on the edge of the plateaus, it can still accept traffic by sea and foot through relatively safe passages. The small enclaves of scholars look to the remains of the Lisentian Library for clues about the previous glories of Espar, and the adventurous flock here looking for a chance to find their fortunes in the Wildlands.